The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1887-07-08
OUT OF A CLEAR SKY.
Strange Association of Two En-
tirely Different Ideas.

For several years two entirely differ
ent ideas have been associated in my
mind in what was to me for long time
a mysterious way.
read somewhere in book of MeXi-
can travels a startling account of a
happy wedding party assembled in an
adobe building which was struck by an
enormous aerOlite that killed every
body and buried the building out of
sight in a twinkling.
In one of Walt Whitman's poems
there is line, Where the lilacs last
in the dOoryard bloomed." 1 have
never read or heard that line but in
stantly comes up in my mind the pic
ture of that awful event in Mexico.
Invariably the perfume of one suggests
the dire and sulphurous cruelty of the
other. There are no lilacs in Mexico.
Nor is there any mention of flowers at
all in the naive and terrible story of
NATURES dramatic catastrophe.
VIII you tell me why fleeting scent
of spring flowers brought with it a
picture of pampas grass, a sound of
mandolin, half-Spanish song, a bride
in black lace and yellow skirts, group
of happy, swarthy faces and a thunder
bolt that buried them all forever and
instantly in indistinguishable ruin?
You can not. And it is my purpose
TO tell you-that is why have written
this paper.
In the late spring of 1884 there was
living at Dobb's Ferry on the Hudson,
in a very pretty little half-Swiss cot
tage that glowed warm with redwood
shingles through the lilac bushes, my
friend Biuninger. 1 used To go aud see
him quite often, for he had the ideal
home Of the rOmancer His was the
only perfect realization of love in a
cottage, unmarried by any of the dis
turbing elements of life, that I had
ever seen.
He had married a beautiful girl. with
whom he had fallen in love. He had
won her in spite of wealthy rivals and
the opposition OF wealthy parents The
whole courtship was a kind of beauti-
full infatuation. He had a good posi-
ton i'm a commercial house in Beaver
street and on moderate income they
had furnished this little home and set
tied down into that holy selfishness
which benignantly regards the rest OF
the universe as subsidiary and contrib
utive.
And the rest of the universe appeared
TO have aided and abetted the dream.
Every thing bloomed and sung and
glowed for them uneventfully. They
were so radiant with love themselves
that they made the world shine. And
don't think anybody of either sex could
have watched them billing and cooling
up there over the blue Hudson like q
pair of robins without feeling a happy
kind of envy, mixed with a protest
against the DEGREES Of fate for having
concentrated all human happiness in
one pair.
Lou, as he called her. was literally q
radiant woman. Her pale beauty was
of that beamy order that emits an
aureOle. You never could quite divest
yourself of the notion that lambent-
psychic light fell on things when she
looked nc them. She was, suppose,
that perfect equipoise of gentleness and
sweetness and tenderness that the
poets have found no other name fol
than woman.
Mrs Sherman, who used to drive NJ
there from the Clock Tower House
called her an "alabaster lamp"
stood there on the graveled path one
afternoon admiring the bush lilacs thai
hung drowsy in their own perfume in
great masses round the porch, and she
came and put her bright face through
them~to sec who il was. She lit the
scene in an instant After all, flowers
and sunshine itself were only frames
for that face. ] remember the shade o.
disappointment that crossed IL. She
thought Binninger bad come.